What You Leave Behind
by Sallywags
Summary: The daughter of 'The Boy Who Lived' looks back on the life of the Father she has never known and ponders what could have been. One shot. Inspiration struck and I couldn't resist! Angsty.


What You Leave Behind

**Disclaimer: I own nothing accept any OCs.**

I never knew my Dad.

How weird is that?

Half the Wizarding World seems to think that they did but I don't even know what his favourite colour was… My own father and I can't even picture his face, or remember the sound of his voice. Sure there are pictures, but its not the same as having actual memories is it? Pictures can be doctored, pictures can lie, and how much can you really tell about a person from a snapshot of one moment of their life? In the end pictures don't tell you a damn thing…

Sure people have told me all about him. How many times have I heard, 'your Dad was a great man', a 'true hero', 'you're so like him'… But am I, looks aside? Or are they only telling me what they think I want to hear? Not wanting to knock him off the pedestal that **everyone** seems to have him on.

I wonder if my Dad ever felt this way? That everyone was lying to him, holding back the things about his parents that he never knew but should have done, leaving him with only idealised views of people who are too impossibly good to have ever really existed. Did he ever wish that they'd just for once tell him how much of a git his Dad could be, how he... I don't know… cheated at cards or something. All the little character flaws in people that you see but never really notice, which make them something more than poor caricatures of themselves, which make them less than perfect, just…human. And you love them all the more for that fact because they're not perfect and never will be.

How am I supposed to relate to this giant of a man, this hero? How can I ever measure up? I'm not like him, at least not like the only him I've ever known, the hero. They don't understand that I don't want the hero; I **can't** relate to the hero I just want my Dad. The guy I could have argued with about curfews, who could have threatened potential boyfriends and got into fights with me about clothes. I want to know the man who could be angry, who could be petty and cruel, who screwed up spells and didn't know how to talk to girls as a teenager. I want to know the real him, not the image that the press, that **everyone** seems to have of him. But I guess I'll never have that…

Don't you just love how history repeats itself? It wasn't bad enough that my Dad never knew his parents because of Voldemort, but it had to happen to me as well. Don't you just adore the symmetry? I mean hadn't he suffered enough? He lost everything as a baby then had his family ripped from his arms as an adult, how is that fair? I guess that's the thing isn't it, life isn't fair. It isn't fair that we'll never get to know each other, that the only way I'll ever hear about him is from other people's stories, stories where he is always the hero, and **everybody** has one…

It's like my Dad knew **everyone** except me… and I know it's stupid but that really hurts. All these random people that he went to school with, that he probably didn't even like and they all have memories of him that I don't. Why couldn't he have spent that time with me? It's not fair, they have stories about him that I'll never hear, because who cares how he always helped so and so with their DADA homework when there is the Triwizard Tournament or the Final Battle to talk about? Why would anyone bother telling me that he maybe always loved to eat bacon sandwiches for breakfast on Sunday mornings? All these people who think they knew him, but did they really? And that's what I really can't stand; I have absolutely **no way** of knowing who is telling the truth and who isn't. No way of discovering which of them really knew my Dad and which of them never even talked to him and only ever saw the façade of the hero. I know that there just has to be more to him than what is in the history books, but how am I ever supposed to find out…

It never used to get to me, my Dad the hero. I used to get the story of his life every night as a bedtime story. He was my hero, my protector. What more could a girl want? But I did want more, eventually, because he was never there, and a little girl needs more than a fairy tale hero… she needs a Dad, and sooner or later she needs to know the truth and not just the comfortable lie. She needs to know that her Dad could be scared too, **I** need to know that his bravery and heroism were all the more heroic because he was scared, terrified and unsure but he did it anyway, because he had to. That is the more impressive feat, not that he didn't feel fear but that he overcame it, but they will never tell me that, and I know it.

They will never tell me what I so desperately need to hear, that my Dad wasn't perfect. That he was brave, that he was foolish and arrogant, but that really he was no better than anyone else, he was just in the right place at the right time and acted in the way that he knew he had to. Ironically Professor Snape is the one who has come closest to telling me exactly this, not shattering my dreams of my father exactly, but more like...fleshing them out, not a hero but a man. It's somehow comforting…

They won't admit that he was ever sacred, 'courage of a lion' or 'a true Gryffindor' are the phrases I've heard more often than not. I've long since realised that if they admit that he was ever scared it means that they, the scared and the fearful who failed to act are somehow made even lesser than they are. If he could overcome his fear and do the right thing and they couldn't what does that say about them? That they left a man, no a boy really, barely twenty to face the most feared Dark Lord of the Last Century while they cowered. Even my family for all their action in the Order of the Phoenix can't or won't (I never could figure out which…) tell me this.

I don't want to hear about how much my Dad loved my Mum, and I've long since stopped wanting to hear the fairy tale of the 'Chamber of Secrets' because when you get down to it, is it really a fairy tale? I used to think so, but then I grew up, I just wish that everyone else would… The 'Chamber of Secrets' isn't a tale about a prince saving a princess; (they were twelve and eleven for Merlin's sake! Am I the only one that remembers that?) It is a tale of darkness and pain, the loss of my Mother's childhood innocence told as a fairy story, the most despicable Dark Lord in 100 years violating the mind of a little girl, that isn't a fairy tale, it's horror. Nor is my dad saving her this great romantic act, I was twelve once and I can't imagine having to do what he did then, fighting off a Basilisk, alone and afraid. I don't think I could have done it, and he shouldn't have had to either, none of it should ever have happened, so why does everyone insist on reliving something which was almost more of a defeat than anything else? And why am I supposed to be fond of hearing about it when the people in that story aren't even real? Even I know it couldn't possibly have happened the way they are telling it…

And it wasn't love at first sight, no matter how they try and tell me I can read between the lines. My Dad was an idiot and he didn't really **see** my Mum for years. And doesn't it make them that much more real, more accessible if I know that? That it wasn't this great flawless romance but instead two people who came together despite the odds, who saw past their horrific pasts and looked to the future, isn't that more inspiring? I want to know what really happened, their rows, the way that looked at each other, talked to each other. I **want** to know where I come from; I **need** to know who I am…

I don't just want to know about the fierce vibrant young woman my Mother became, or the intensely brave young man that my Father had to become to lead the Order after Dumbledore's death. I want to know the insecure and vulnerable young woman who fell for Voldemort's lies and the frightened young man tossed into a strange new world of magic and danger where he was suddenly expected to be this hero, when all his life he'd been nothing. I can't even imagine what those people were like, either no one knows or no one wants to tell me. Is it so wrong that I want to hear how my parents were just as confused as I am when they were young? Why can't they understand that to understand my parents I need to see both sides, who they were, and what they became. So I can see that there is hope for anyone if they could become what they did.

The things I want to hear are the things that no one can tell me. What my parents thought when they were doing all these amazing things, why they acted the way they did and the hundred and one normal everyday things that they probably weren't even aware that they did. That is what I really want to know. I guess I'll have to accept that I never will…

I know I'm being way to melodramatic about this, I mean…It's not like I'm badly off really, there's Grandma and Grandpa, my twelve Aunts and Uncles, more cousins than I even want to think about so I'm not alone, but… I'm not the same as them, I never will be, somehow set apart, different. How bigheaded does that sound? But its true, unfortunately, Merlin knows I never asked for this…I just… I know sometimes that they don't know what to say to me, how to act. And I can't help but wonder, am I really one of them? Stupid question, of course I am, though you wouldn't think it to look at me... But, The Burrow isn't Grandma and Grandpa's house to me, like it is to the rest of them, and somehow, on some fundamental level I **know** that that is wrong. I love them, but I shouldn't be here, I **know** that… I should be with them, the two people I will never meet, never know, no matter how much I wish that things could have been different.

And then there are the things I think about that I just know I'll never be able to tell a soul, the things so awful that I can barely bear to think about them myself…Like, and I feel so guilty for thinking it since we're all safe because of what they did and I should be grateful too, I mean they sacrificed, their very lives, but...

Sometimes, late at night, when I'm all alone, I think of them and I'm so angry that they're gone, angry that they left me. And when that happens I can't breathe for the pain, it's like someone crushing my chest with a mallet, and I want to cry, I want someone to comfort me, but the people I want can't come, and it hurts so badly that I can't cry, my throat is so raw that I can't scream and I just want so much for all of this to have been a bad dream, but it isn't…They, my own parents, chose a world that, frankly, treated them both like crap over their only daughter, and that isn't a dream, and I wish (Oh how I wish) that they hadn't been quite so noble, that they hadn't given their lives for 'the cause' (what the hell is the cause anyway? I never really figured that out). And on those nights I wish that they were still here, even if to save them Voldemort had to come back too.

That's the thing I can't ever tell anyone, 'cos they just wouldn't understand, and I know it. I'm a horrible person for even thinking it, weak, that's what it is and what would my parents have thought of that? Which brings me right back to the thought that I will never know what they would have thought about me thinking that, because they're not here…

Don't you just hate symmetry?

At the moment I seem physically incapable of writing something non-angsty, must be a state of mind thing…But anyway inspiration struck and this came out, surprised me too, but I kind of like the idea even if it hasn't quite worked…

**Anyway please review and tell me what you think, it'll only take a minute and I'd be really grateful for any comments!**

**Thanks!**

**XXX**


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